The best way to predict your future is to invent it.

According to the Freelancer’s Union, as of Fall 2015, almost 54 million Americans considered themselves freelancers, and nearly two-thirds of those people “made the jump by choice.”

But interestingly, the results of a 2015 survey conducted by Contently show that only about one-third of freelancers would decline “a full-time job in [their] field, with identical pay plus benefits…” Part of that may stem from the fact that, along with the perks respondents identified—like making their own hours and choosing what they work on—there are also concrete challenges. One-third of those surveyed listed “securing enough work” as their greatest struggle, and another 14% indicated they had trouble making enough money.

If you are (or would like to be) a full-time freelancer, you’ll need to prepare for and address the real issues that might come your way so you can be as successful as possible. Luckily, there are a ton of resources out there to support you in your endeavor—and we’ve gathered them all in one place:

Getting Started

You have a talent or skill that’s in demand. Colleagues and friends alike ask you if you’ll proofread their work, if you’ll design a logo for their latest ventures, if you’ll share your marketing expertise, if you’ll photograph their events, or if you’ll explain the latest social media trends. You know you could be charging for that thing you’re particularly good at, and you find the idea of freelancing pretty enticing.

Before you jump in with both feet, remember that working for yourself means more than wearing whatever you please and not having to share the team fridge. You’ll want to think through where you’ll work (Do you have a designated area at home, complete with a desk? Does it make sense to invest in a co-working space?), what hours you’ll keep (so you don’t get pulled into errands and lunches you really don’t have time for), and other seemingly small but super important things like having a phone plan that accommodates lengthy client calls and dependable Wi-Fi.

I’d recommend reading this article by Kate Kendall, the founder of the “talent marketplace” CloudPeeps. Kendall lays out a feasible plan for analyzing what separates you from the pack, finding your first clients, and getting real about just how paltry your income may be (at least initially).

Finding Work

Per Kendall’s suggestion, it’s a good idea to drum up some work as soon as possible—even before making the move from part-time to full-time freelancing. (And even if you’ve already been at it for a while, it’s never too late to revisit how you can gain traction and find additional work.) Check out these resources on finding clients and promoting your services.

If you’re a full-time freelance writer, the site freelance writing jobs posts a roundup of opportunities each weekday and conducted a survey that’s a good reminder you can also find freelancing projects on more generalized sites like Craigslist and Indeed. The Mix from Hearst pays writers for personal essays they choose to publish, and getting a byline on a site like Cosmopolitan, Elle, or Seventeen is great for credibility.

2. Through Your Website and Social Media Profiles

Along with looking for opportunities, you also want to make sure that clients can find you—and that when they do, they’re impressed by what they see.

Your first stop is a killer personal website, and The Muse has many helpful articles on using Squarespace. (I know: I poured over them when I decided I was ready to migrate from a Blogger site.) Here are some of my personal favorites:

Updating these won’t just increase your credibility, they’ll provide potential clients multiple ways to get in touch with you. Even if you have a top-notch LinkedIn profile or thousands of Twitter followers—if you only have one or the other, you’re isolating a client who doesn’t use the platform you’re active on. So, while you don’t want to stretch yourself too thin, you do want to come up with a strategy for how you’ll manage your brand on a daily, monthly, and weekly basis.

That said, it remains up to you what you make public. Maybe you want Instagram or Facebook to be a place where you share photos with just family and friends—and that’s totally OK. Review your privacy settings to confirm who you’re sharing updates with (and even if they’re rock solid, I’d still advise against posting inflammatory content). If a business contact tries to friend you on one of these sites, send him or her a LinkedIn invite instead, and indicate that’s a much better way to stay in touch.

3. Via Your Network

Some people, especially when they’re starting out, want to keep their work under wraps. They don’t want their family and friends to think they expect them to spend money on their new venture—which is valid, and probably much appreciated.

But at the same time, remember that your contacts will come across people and projects that could benefit from a freelancer. And who better than you—someone who’s talented and who they already know and trust? This email template is a great place to start. It lets others know exactly what you’re up to you (and offers to return the favor).

And don’t forget: It could be that your connection was tasked with finding someone, and by alerting him to your new gig, you’re actually making his life easier.

Anyway, I’ve just began the interview process at TopTal.com (to become a part of the Web Developer community), and I really like to get in and become one of the freelancers who work there. If you’re a Web Designer or Web Developer who is looking for work, I recommend that you do the same.

Genymotion is the next generation of the AndroVM open source project, already trusted by 900,000 developers. It is a fast, cross-platform Android emulator that comes with pre-configured Android in it. It’s so easy to use and has lots of functionality that normal android emulator doesn’t. It can be very useful for developers, testers, salesman or even gamers. It is available for most operating systems: Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. It is as simple to install as powerful to use:

Features

Android as its best

OpenGL acceleration to achieve the best 3D performance

Enable full screen option and improve your experience

Be precise in your UI development with the “pixel perfect” functionality

Fully controllable

Start multiple virtual device at the same time

Manage sensors:

Battery level / status

GPS

Rotation

Camera

Override virtual device identifiers

Directly command virtual devices sensors with Genymotion Shell

Fully compatible with ADB. You can control your virtual device from the host

Overview

Ubuntu supports printer sharing over networks, so you can print from your Ubuntu machine, your Windows machine, etc, to another Ubuntu or Windows machine that has a printer attached (ie a “Ubuntu print server” or “Windows print server”).

Background

Ubuntu uses the Common UNIX Printing System (“CUPS”) to handle printing. CUPS uses the Internet Printing Protocol (“IPP”) as the basis for managing print jobs and queues. Other protocols are also supported (LPD, SMB, AppSocket a.k.a. JetDirect), some with reduced functionality.

CUPS printer configuration and management is handled by the Printer Admin utility launched from the Gnome menu – System -> Administration -> Printing (If the menu item does not exist you need to add the command system-config-printer to the menu). Also IPP provides web services so after you have configured CUPS appropriately, you can access the printers and jobs via your web browser.

When a locally attached printer is defined, eg using the Printer Admin utility, that printer is automatically published from this “print server” host to the network, depending on the server directives in the CUPS configuration file. A remote Ubuntu “client” host can then be able to see and use the printer attached to the server. The network printer automatically appears in the client’s Printer Admin utility. It simply pops up if CUPS is up and configured correctly and disappears if you stop CUPS at either the Print Server or your local machine.

Ubuntu print server

The Print Server is the Ubuntu computer that is directly connected to the printers.

On the server machine (the one the printer is attached to), open System -> Administration -> Printing (If the menu item does not exist you need to add system-config-printer to the menu). . This will open the Printer Configuration window.

Select Server in the menu bar, and then Settings. This will open the Basic Server Settings window.

Check the second box:

Publish shared printers connected to this server If this computer acts as both a Print Server and a client (it does need access to a printer connected to another computer), select also the first box, “Show printers shared by other systems”.

OK

Right click the printer and check the Shared option, if not checked yet

Ubuntu print server compatible with Windows (Samba)

If your Ubuntu print server shall be able to work also with Windows clients, you must first make sure that the SAMBA package is installed (e.g. using Synaptic package manager). Then, do a little configuration change to SAMBA. In brief, you must uncomment the following lines in /etc/samba/smb.conf – open terminal and run:

Printing from Ubuntu

Now let’s configure the client (the Ubuntu computer from where you want to print):

System -> Administration -> Printing

Add – Network printer

Click Find network printer

Specify the host IP address or name. (It may also work without, try) (IP address worked for me, hostname did not.)

Click Find

Printers on the target machine should be found, no matter whether they are connected using CUPS or SAMBA.

BUT if both protocols are available, e.g. because you have shared your printer on a Linux box both using CUPS and Samba, prefer CUPS (ipp://) over Samba (smb://), because you won’t be prompted to install a driver in general.You **may** be prompted to select a driver. Select your model in the list.

(to be done) What to do if driver is not in the list

Printing from Windows

Once your Ubuntu print server is set up using SAMBA as described above, you can add the printer in Windows as follows:

Start

Devices and Printers

Add a printer

Add a network, wireless or Bluetooth printer

Click The printer that I want isn’t listed (unless a miracle happens)

Enter the address manually (\\servername\MyPrinter). Be sure to respect uppercase/lowercase.

Note that searching or browsing for printers in Windows is notoriously unreliable, as it heavily depends on the network setup. Therefore, it is recommended to enter the printer address manually as shown.

Windows will then probably complain about a missing driver, and offer you to choose one manually. This is the easiest option, so select your printer manufacturer and model from the dialog box. (Alternatively, the Samba configuration could be improved so that the driver would be automatically downloaded.) If your printer model isn’t listed, you may try the “Generic” printer.

Troubleshooting

If there is an firewall either on print server or the client side, there might appear a communications problem. Use this command to update the firewall to get through.

iptables -A INPUT -p tcp –dport 631 -j ACCEPT

This rule is used for IPP only. If you’re using other protocol, such as SAMBA, you have to adapt.

You might need to use this rule on both sides (server & client) if the firewall is being used on both of them. To apply this rule after each start/restart of the system, use /etc/rc.local .

2. Networking issues.

Be careful about using different network masks/subnets on your network where you would like to share the printer.

If the subnets differs, e.g. on the print server there would be a /24 (255.255.255.0) netwok mask configured, and e.g. on the clients there would be a /16 (255.255.0.0) network mask – perhaps provided by the DHCP server, this might cause a problem that clients won’t be able to detect any shared printer on the server, even if other communications between print server and clients would be possible (e.g. ICMP, ssh) and successful.

If such situation happens, you have to unify the network masks/subnets on all of your stations, e.g. use /24 (255.255.255.

3. IP address

Generally, it is a good idea to assign your print server a static IP address. Instead, using its host name is also possible, but functionality will then depend on proper configuration of your home router, name service, etc.

4. IPv6Windows (since XP) can print over IPv6 to Ubuntu Linux (tested between Windows XP SP3 and Ubuntu Linux 8.10). Make sure both the Windows and Ubuntu have IPv6 connectivity. You should tick “Allow Printing from the Internet” on the Ubuntu machine. Then use the URL (which resolves to IPv6) of the Ubuntu machine as described above.

5. Mac OS X 10.5.

Will not find your network printer unless you go to the terminal and run cupsctl BrowseRemoteProtocols=cups (see the CUPS 1.4 documentation at http://www.cups.org/documentation.php/doc-1.4/sharing.html). After doing so, you may need to set the network printer as your default printer for it to show up in program “print” menus.

Elance Tracker app uses Adobe Air and as Adobe has stopped Air support for Linux (the latest supported version is 2.6) – it became problematic to run Air apps on Linux.
You can find a lot of manual allover the Web how to solve different issues and install Air on Linux (like linking libgnome-keyring.so etc.), but with Ubuntu each new version brings less compatibility.
On Ubuntu 13.10 for a long time I was not able to install Adobe Air in any way. Only one manual from tkalin.com helped me to figure it out.

My previous manual using Wine was not correct. Sorry for that, with Wine you can install and run Tracker, but time and screenshots are not being tracked. So it is useless.

And then click next and wait until finishexit exit3. Now need to change the permission for htdocs :cd /opt/lampp sudo chmod 777 htdocs

create one demo.php file and write code :

<?php
echo “Hello World !”;
?>

4. To start the XAMPP service :

sudo su /opt/lampp/lampp start exit exit5. To stop the XAMPP service:sudo su /opt/lampp/lampp stop exit exit6. To open the page of XAMPP, whenever you want, type in the address bar of your browser:http://localhost/xampp/7. To run the php file:http://localhost/xampp/demo.php

You need to visit the official Twitter developer site and register for a developer account. This is a free and necessary step to make requests for the v1.1 API.

2. Create an application: Create an application on the Twitter developer site

What? You thought you could make unauthenticated requests? Not with Twitter’s v1.1 API. You need to visit http://dev.twitter.com/apps and click the “Create Application” button.

On this page, fill in whatever details you want. For me, it didn’t matter, because I just wanted to make a load of block requests to get rid of spam followers. The point is you are going to get yourself a set of unique keys to use for your application.

So, the point of creating an application is to give yourself (and Twitter) a set of keys. These are:

OAuth requests a few tokens. So you need to have them generated for you.

Click “create my access token” at the bottom. Then once you scroll to the bottom again, you’ll have some newly generated keys. You need to grab the four previously labelled keys from this page for your API calls, so make a note of them somewhere.

4. Change access level: You don’t want read-only, do you?

If you want to make any decent use of this API, you’ll need to change your settings to Read & Write if you’re doing anything other than standard data retrieval using GET requests.

I need this stuff quite often. Every time i need to create a new virtual host in Ubuntu i have to google/search to find this solution as i cannot remember these paths properly. I am posting it here for quick reference for myself. Bookmark it for yourself (which i am going to do after i have finished posting it ;))

1. Enable virtual hosts by editing httpd.conf, if it is not enabled already. Once you enable it you can skip this step next time.

sudo gedit /opt/lampp/etc/httpd.conf

Find #Include etc/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf and remove the # to un-comment this line

Include etc/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf

2. Add new virtual host by opening the httpd-vhosts.conf file

sudo gedit /opt/lampp/etc/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf

Usually, by default there are two virtual hosts in this file. You can edit one or create new one by copy-pasting one of them. The required entries are DocumentRoot andServerName

Wubi is an officially supported installer for Windows XP, Vista and 7 users that allows Ubuntu to be installed and uninstalled in a safe, easy way as with any other Windows application.

What about Windows 8?

At this time, Wubi does not work with Windows 8 default boot-loader. Thus at this point Wubi would not work on a new Windows 8 machine. You would be able to install, but not reboot into Ubuntu.

If you upgraded to Windows 8 and are using BIOS firmware, Wubi does work, but do not enable hybrid-sleep on Windows 8.

How to use this guide

Please note that this guide is only for issues directly related to the Wubi installer; for general Ubuntu questions please use appropriate resources such as the official Ubuntu documentation, the Ubuntu Forums, or the Ubuntu Guide.

You might also be interested in the Ubuntu Forums Installations & Upgrades section.

Warning

Wubi uses a virtual disk that is sensitive to forced shutdowns. If Ubuntu appears to be frozen please refer to: How to reboot cleanly even when the keyboard/mouse are frozen

Where do I find older versions of Wubi?

How can I use a manually downloaded ISO?

You need to download the DESKTOP CD ISO of the appropriate version. Place the ISO in the same folder where you have wubi.exe and then run Wubi. For example, Wubi 11.10 requires the 11.10 DESKTOP ISO, available here.

Note that you need a DESKTOP CD ISO. A DVD ISO may not work (except for Edubuntu). Alternate ISO files are not supported.

Why is the AMD64 version of Ubuntu being downloaded and installed?

The machine you are trying to install Ubuntu on is 64 bit. The AMD64 installation is appropriate for all 64 bit architectures, no matter if they are AMD or Intel.

Can I force Wubi to download and install a 32 bit version of Ubuntu?

To modify arguments without using the command prompt, right-click Wubi.exe and select “Create Shortcut”. Then right-click the shortcut, select Properties, and modify the Target line, for example: “C:\Documents and Settings\<user>\Desktop\wubi.exe” –32bit

Can I force Wubi to install if I have less than 256MB of memory?

Yes. start Wubi with the argument “–skipmemorycheck”. The installer may not work in such conditions.

Can I force Wubi to install even if I have less than 5GB of free disk space?

No. From release 11.10, 5GB is required as a minimum including enough space to store the ISO. On older releases, start Wubi with the argument “–skipspacecheck”. Even on older releases, you’ll still require 3GB of space plus room for the ISO. Pushing this limit too hard may cause errors.

Can I force Wubi to skip the md5 checks?

Yes. Start Wubi with the argument “–skipmd5check”.

Which Operating Systems are supported?

Windows 7, Vista, XP, and 2000 are known to work with Wubi. Windows 98 should also work, but has not been thoroughly tested. Windows ME is not supported. Linux is supported through Lubi.

What happens if the installation is interrupted?

If the installation is interrupted for any reason, you will have to run Wubi.exe again from within the Windows installation (which in turn may force you to uninstall first).

Upgrading

Upgrading from 12.04 to 12.10 is supported. FIXME other

Upgrading from releases 10.04 and later is supported. Please review the applicable release notes before hand. Ensure you have sufficient free space, and consider backing up the \ubuntu\disks directory (from Windows) in case there are any errors, or you prefer to revert to the old release.

Uninstallation

How do I uninstall Wubi?

Run the uninstaller in “Control Panel > Add or Remove Programs” for Windows XP or lower or “Control Panel > Programs and Features” for Windows Vista or Windows 7. Alternatively, you can run: C:\ubuntu\Uninstall-Ubuntu.exe.

How do I manually uninstall Wubi?

Remove C:\ubuntu and C:\wubildr*

In Windows XP you need to edit C:\boot.ini and delete the Ubuntu/Wubi line. Alternatively you can modify the boot menu via Control Panel > System > Advanced > Startup and Recovery and pressing “Edit”. For Windows 98 you have to edit C:\config.sys and remove the Wubi block. For Windows Vista/7, you can use the built-in bcdedit command or install EasyBCD to edit the boot menu. To use bcdedit, run cmd.exe as an administrator, then enter bcdedit to show all boot entries, note the {GUID} specified for the Ubuntu entry, and then remove it: bcdedit /delete {GUID}

To remove Wubi from the add/remove list, delete the registry key: HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\Wubi

An easy method of removing this registry key is to paste the following text into a plain editor such as Notepad, close and save the file as something like removeWubiKey.reg (you may wish to go to Folder Options > View and disable the “Hide file extensions for known file types” option to check that the .reg extension has been applied correctly). Then you can perform the rest automatically by opening the file in the normal Windows manner, or choosing the “Merge” option from the right click context menu. Note: The formatting is rather strict, so copy the text exactly for best results. You may need to be logged in as the administrator to delete the key, depending on the version of Windows you are using. User Account Control in Vista may also ask for permission, in the typical fashion.

After deleting the registry key, Ubuntu may still appear in the program list. If this is the case, you may be asked if you would like to remove the item from the list.

How do I reinstall Wubi?

Run Wubi.exe again. Wubi will detect that there is an existing installation and you will be offered an option to uninstall. You may want to backup the installation files (the ISO) in order to avoid having to download them again. Note that when you reinstall, the system virtual drive (root.disk) is reset.

How can I make a backup of my Wubi install?

The easiest method is to to simply copy the root.disk to an external medium. In the event that something goes wrong, copy the root.disk back to the Ubuntu folder on the Windows drive. Note that this is not the most efficient method (since it copies the whole root.disk rather than specific data/settings) but it is effective.